This had a distinctly odd sound to me, but then the Greeks are different.
The barmaid arrived at the table with a large bowl divided down its middle into two halves. One held olives, the other parched peas and nuts: thirst-inducing snacks esteemed by tavern keepers the world over.
“Bring us a pitcher of Falernian,” I said. “Don’t bother with water.” “No Falernian,” she reported. “We have Coan, Corinthian, Lesbian, Cretan, and we just got in some fine Judean. Have you ever tried Judean? It’s wonderful.” Having no reason to doubt her word, I ordered the Judean.
With my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I took a longer look at our surroundings. The walls were plastered white and covered with paintings and graffiti. The paintings were second-rate, mostly the usual sea-gods, tritons, nereids, and so forth. One wall had a depiction of the story of Perseus and Andromeda. The graffiti were no more than ordinarily scabrous, mostly of the cursing or blessing sort. Some, though, were in languages I could not read. I took some to be Persian, others Syrian. One of them, I swear it, was in Egyptian hieroglyphics.
“What do we do now?” Cleopatra asked.
“This is a tavern,” I said. “We drink.”
She frowned. “We can do that anyplace.”
“We can’t rush things. I can’t very well stand up and announce my intentions. It wouldn’t look right. We’ll have to wait and be approached.”
“How will anyone know who you are?”
“They’ll know,” I assured her. “They knew the moment I walked in here.”
The wine arrived and the Judean proved to be as good as the girl had promised and of a pale rose color I had never seen before. Since Cyprus lay close to Judea, it could travel there without suffering the usual deleterious effects of a long sea voyage.
Alpheus regaled us with stories of the gods and how they had disported themselves on Cyprus and in its surrounding waters. He was a most ingratiating companion, and it was a good thing for him, since it was how he made his living. As the evening rolled pleasantly by, I saw a few of my own men, but they faded back out when they caught sight of me. No man feels comfortable carousing under the eye of his commander.
“Decius,” Cleopatra whispered, touching my arm, “over there, that corner table opposite ours—doesn’t that woman look familiar?”
I squinted in that direction. At a small table a woman sat between two burly, bearded men. From both sides they leaned close and spoke into her ears. I suspected they were not discussing the price of copper in the Paphos market. The woman had let her cloak fall back far enough to reveal a good-quality gown skimpy enough to reveal the greater part of her prodigious breasts. Nobody’s hands were above the table, but they seemed to be busily employed. The woman’s flushed, laughing face looked decidedly familiar.
“Isn’t that Flavia,” Cleopatra asked, “the banker’s wife?” I looked again. Her dark hair hung loose to her shoulders, meaning she had been wearing a blonde wig at the banquet two nights earlier. It was definitely Flavia.
“The lady seems to enjoy slumming,” I said. “She wouldn’t be the first rich woman I’ve known to supplement a fat, old husband’s inadequacies with virile if lowborn company.” I could have named a score of noble Roman ladies who could have given this one lessons in scandalous deportment, but it has never been my habit to gossip.
“Pretend we haven’t seen her,” Alpheus advised, relishing the whole business. “Otherwise she might be embarrassed next time we see her with her husband—was his name Nobilior?—at the house of Silvanus.”
Moments later, while the princess and the poet were deep in conversation, I happened to glance toward the corner table and saw Flavia staring straight into my eyes. She wore a loose, lazy, slightly drunken smile as she shrugged a shoulder and let her gown fall, revealing one amazingly bulbous breast. It was quickly captured by one of her companions, who began to maul it mercilessly with a broad, calloused hand while she smiled at me triumphantly and her lips formed a word I could not understand. No, we were not likely to embarrass this woman.
“Are you the Roman sent out here to hunt pirates?”
My attention was distracted from the woman to a man who stood by our table, and he was a riveting specimen. Deeply tanned like all sailors, his powerful body was covered with old scars, and they were from battle not the public torturer. His tunic was even scantier than that worn by Hermes and exposed a great deal of this scarred flesh. Tucked into his rope cincture was a large, curved dagger. Most astonishingly for these waters, the man’s short-cropped hair was pure blond, almost like a German’s. His eyes burned a brilliant blue above his blocky cheekbones. His feet were bare.